Customization of the CAD software in a typical drawing office for a power and electricity distribution company in Zimbabwe

Computer Aided Design (CAD) packages are normally bought off-the-shelf for a wide range of engineering disciplines. However, a single system cannot possibly meet requirements of different users as these packages are normally provided with basic primitives but no blocks for quick generations. A case study carried out at a power enterprise in Zimbabwe revealed delays in attending to faults and installations at their substations partly because of delays in the provision of working drawings. Although the company migrated from manual to CAD drawings, the techniques they employed resulted in duplications and delays. An in-house software development strategy was employed in this research to customize their AutoCAD software through an industrial engineering approach aimed at lowering man-hours by generating and storing symbols of their equipment for retrieval and use in future drawings, resulting in lead time reductions and integration with their maintenance management system to avoid duplication of tasks and information.